Letters: Climate change argument fails

Tom Russell (March 10) falls into an ancient logical fallacy: the argument from personal incredulity. But an inability to understand climate change is not a valid argument against its existence. He's certainly correct that the extreme weather Americans are now experiencing is not unprecedented, and that the climate has always been changing. But his argument nevertheless fails.

First, no climatologist has ever said that our current weather is entirely new. Rather, they tell us that the frequency, intensity, and unpredictability of extreme weather is increasing — and that this increase is directly correlated with rising atmospheric temperatures. Second, no scientist has ever said our climate has always remained the same. Rather, they tell us that the past eleven millennia have a climate stable enough for agriculture to develop, and in its wake, a complex civilization — and that these "stable enough" conditions are currently ending.

The thing is, human intuition is poorly equipped to make sense of planet-wide data and geological timescales; Mr. Russell and his colleagues in the world of meteorology work exclusively with local and regional data on timescales a fortnight or less. Humans' intuitions do poorly on larger scales of time and space, which is why science is important. Climatologists work with statistical analysis, historical data, and a continually improving model of the Earth's climate — and they've have been making steadily more accurate predictions for decades.

Mr. Russell may not like the facts of climate change, but he's going to have to live with them.